Speaker elections: here is Parliament's chance to redeem itself

Here's what I'm looking for in the next Speaker. The candidate who comes closest is, I suppose, Richard Shepherd, a parliamentarian to his fingertips, a lifelong campaigner for open government, a mahatma with regard to his own expenses, a sea-green incorruptible who has never sought preferment. It says something about his fellow MPs – or perhaps about the bookies – that he should be a rank outsider at 40-1.

Reports that MPs are planning vote on party lines, or on class grounds, or from caprice, or – worst of all – at the behest of their Whips, are too depressing for words. Have they really learned nothing from the past two months? Don't get me wrong: there is no shortage of decent candidates. Regular readers will know of my tendresse for Sir George Young, who also emerges fragrantly from the expenses affair and who, for all his Establishment demeanour, would champion the prerogatives of the chamber. (For what it's worth, the benign baronet picks up a surprising endorsement from today's Guardian.)

Nor am I part of the anti-Bercow chorus: a man is allowed to change his mind, and John is a brilliant speaker who has an unfeigned attachment to the House of Commons as an institution. I just hope that, if MPs vote for him, they do so because they believe he is the right man for the job, and not in order to spite someone else.

We'll know soon enough. Having had an unwontedly successful day at the races in Ascot yesterday, I'm not placing any bets. But I will say one thing. MPs would demean themselves if they dutifully piled in behind Margaret Beckett. Not that I have anything against the woman: I've never met her. But you can't run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Mrs Becket was a senior member of the government until five minutes ago, and is a former leader of the Labour Party, for Heaven's sake. If she got in, it would be a demonstration of the legislature's utter abasement before the executive. Why bother having a Parliament if it won't stand up to ministers?

UPDATE: Richard Shepherd has just made the best speech of any of the contenders. Rather than flatter his audience, he said some hard things that needed saying. He wanted the House of Commons to be what it had once been, he said, not what it had recently become. The Freedom of Information Act had been a splendid piece of legislation, even though what it had revealed was ugly. Hardly the stuff to appeal to MPs, most of whom are deeply prickly about the expenses scandal. It is precisely this indifference to advancement that commends him for the office he seeks and that will, in all probability, bar hom from it.